SLS EUS & ACES Lunar Impactor with CubeSat observers and impactors

November 7, 2016

SLS EUS Lunar Impactor with CubeSat observers and impactors
After payload separation EUS performs Lunar South Pole targeted burn. Safe the stage and deploy Cubesats.Cubesats fly a LCROSS science profile and trajectory and follow the EUS to impact with Polar ice. Some CubeSat’s could impact first observed by others (The “B” train).
Xenon inflated Hypersonic atmospheric decelerator CubeSat demonstrator
This concept test fly’s a Xenon inflated HIAD that we call Xe-HIAD.It would deploy from a Lunar Impacting EUS or more intriguing a EUS in an Earth free return trajectory. Xe-HAID would demonstrate a Xenon SEP engine and Xenon inflated HIAD at Earth atmosphere. HAID and SEP would research using Xenon as propellant post-Earth encounter.
A follow-on mission would be to recover a EUS with a human rated Xe-HIAD to recover the EUS itself with an Earth free return from Cislunar space. This would also demonstrate a Human rated HIAD for Human Mars missions. This EUS would need Solar array and avionics/comnav powered up for the Lunar free return and Earth XE-HAID.We can do trades on what earth orbit to place EUS into for the design of stage recovery or subsequent CubeSat deployments. Xenon recover from the Xe-HIAD would be repurposed as SEP propellant. ARRM Xenon tanks are placed in the EUS inter tank area. EUS and ACES with Xe-HIAD are the start of a Lunar cycler fleet that can be refueled and reused with both chemical and SEP propellants. On the underside of the Xe-HIAD you could deploy additional Com/Nav/solar array/science instruments

Such a mission design could work for dual manifested payloads on the proposed ULA Vulcan ACES.Conops for ACES might be GTO/GEO for a payload. Lunar flyby with secondary payloads. Earth return for Oberth effect and more interplanetary payloads. You would think a Xe-HIAD would cancel out most of an oberth gain for secondary payloads released here? ACES could provide Com/Nave for a fleet of smallsats on an interplanetary trajectory utilizing ELECTRA radio system
The XE-HIAD SEP powered CubeSat demonstrator
This might also be a larger space craft deployed from an SLS EUS however a size progression in flight experiments might be in order, CubeSat, larger spacecraft and finally a very large Xe-HIAD that does the Lunar earth free return experiment. The HIAD team could do an earth atmosphere Xe inflation experiment at Hawaii that would complement a small CubeSat XE-HIAD